CPU Temperature While Idle

CPU Temperature Under Load

GPU Core Clock Rate

GPU Effective Memory Clock Rate

GPU Temperature While Idle

GPU Temperature Under Load

Description

With this build I'm aiming to prioritize noise reduction without sacrificing performance in games and graphics-related applications.

Some basic numbers:

CPU fans idle at 265 rpm and 38 C.

GPU fans idle at 500 rpm and 40 C (flashed BIOS).

Case fans switch on at 50 C.

CPU/GPU hit 50-55 C under load.

Additional details:
Western Digital Reds were the quietest 2TB+ hard drives I could find but they're just barely audible when there is no other sound in the room. Otherwise this build would be completely silent when idling/browsing. Still waiting on the LG monitor from Massdrop, but otherwise everything's up and running. Plays Elite: Dangerous on Oculus DK2 like a champ.

EDIT 1:
I've received a boatload of awesome tips and suggestions from the wonderful community here. I'll post an update some time in the next few weeks with all of the changes as well as pictures of the completed setup and workspace (including all of the peripherals). Thanks everyone!

EDIT 2:
I switched out the Rosewill RNX-N250PCe wireless adapter for a ASUS PCE-AC68 dual band 802.11ac adapter. The Rosewill adapter was perfectly fine until we upgraded our router/modem/internet package today and moved the location of the router. After doing some reading and getting up to speed on what all those networking standards mean, I decided to go for a nicer wireless adapter which will be compatible with Time Warner's 300 Mbps service that's coming to my area next year.

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My greatest regret. I forgot to think in terms of non-gaming performance when I bought the CPU so I went with what seemed like more than enough for modern games. I'm actually super sad about this but what can ya do?

Most of that 6k is In accessories the build itself by no means cheap but for the Quality parts in that build is fairly reasonable. You can if motivated enough sell the i5 or give it to a friend and get the i7 it dosent look like your too strapped for cash!!!

For real, this is actually more of a 2k build + high end accessories. I should still try to switch to i7 but in the meantime there's plenty of very tangible quality here to keep me happy! A lot of aspects of PC building tend to have dramatically diminishing returns as you scale up, but in my opinion industrial design isn't one of them. The physical user experience is really important to me after being spoiled by years of using Macs professionally.

The best i7 would be the 4790k although I don't think it'll work for your build. As it's known to have problems with temperatures, so it would mean your CPU fans will have to run overtime to keep it cool. I'd keep the i5.

0_0 That's hardcore. Someone else on another board recommended getting short cable extensions and having just the visible side of the mobo sleeved by a sleeving service. I don't know how much that costs though.

The time investment of sleeving myself is a big barrier for me but not a dealbreaker. It's mainly the amount of computer downtime I can't afford if it ends up taking more than like, a day.

What do you think? Any idea how much it would cost to get a bunch of cable extensions sleeved? How long would it take to sleeve everything myself?

I thought about buying Noctua fans for the build I am gathering parts for but I just cannot get past the awful color of the fans. They don't look bad in your build though. Perhaps because there is enough of them that they don't look out of place.

As far as color goes, the best advice is to pick one dominant color and one secondary color for a 2-tone palette and stick with it! You can go with a third accent color as long as you make sure that it doesn't conflict with your main 2-tone colors. That can be done either by using the third accent color in really tiny quantities (like an accent) OR by choosing a color that is similar in hue to one of the other colors (ex: if you have a blue/white color scheme, your accent might be grey, or dark blue).

I personally fell in love with the Noctua aesthetic as soon as I saw it because to me the unconventional palette perfectly reinforces their positioning as an understated, high quality, premium brand. It's all about low-key sophistication with them, as cheesy as it sounds :D

In a perfect world all of my case fans would line up in a perfect grid. Someone should design that case. One word of warning to potential D15 buyers: the RAM compatibility list on Noctua's website includes for taller memory sticks which would offset the inner heat sink fan by several centimeters. Having the two fans misaligned is unacceptable if you care about this stuff so make sure to spend the time to find RAM short enough to accommodate perfectly aligned fans when considering the D15 as your cooler.

You may want to hold off on that. At Computex last year Noctua revealed that they were working on 200mm fans. They will be more quiet than 140s and move a rediculous amount of air. Also, I didn't notice before, but nice Enthoo Pro, I love that case so much.

Thanks man! It's a huge step up from the DK1. I haven't had too much time to test every demo yet but Elite: Dangerous with HOTAS and VR absolutely lives up to the hype. You really get that sense of being connected to the vehicle around you, kind of like driving a car. The feeling is amplified by the fact that the interior cockpit hand motions all animate correctly with whatever you're doing with your joystick and throttle, so you start to feel like you're really there, all suited up, interacting with a spaceship.

Hahaha thanks man! Yeah I think they'd be pretty damn ugly in the vast majority of builds, but only because 99% of PC accessories use neon or primary color palettes. If only there were more pastel or earth toned parts to choose from... :D

I actually have a Fiio E12 Mont Blanc headphone amp but honestly I can't really hear any difference in sound quality. People on the Internet talk about how PCs and iPods don't have enough power to drive higher end headphones which results in the sound being too quiet, but as far as I can tell, every device I've used the 650s with can pretty much be cranked to deafening levels. As for sound quality, going from HD280s to 650s was a massive, obvious difference. But with amp vs. without amp... not so much.

That's unfortunate, that you can't seem to hear a difference with your amp. Headphone amps aren't only for powering them, you should be able to hear more detail and nuances in the music with an amplifier. I don't know what you're listening to, but if you haven't tried already, maybe you'll find a little more luck with some lossless audio like FLAC.. or maybe your headphones aren't broken in yet. At least you've put in the due diligence. Most audiophiles would cringe if they saw 650's plugged into onboard.

Sorry, all I've got right now are some old Grado SR-60s and some 280's.. and they've both seen better days.. not sure if they call for an amp. One day, I'll have some high-end headphones.. At least they're not Beats by Dre.

I was worried about this as well when buying these. They seemed pretty secure when I installed them a few weeks ago. I'll take a picture and wiggle them around in a few days when I put in a new wireless adapter.

Im looking about putting one of those 970s in my first build, and I needed some information. If you could look at my saved partlist should be named "future computer v2" or something similar, that would be great. I just really need an expert analysis of my parts before i blow over $1000 on them.

I came back to your build to see those stunnin' 970's again! but I wanted to ask you, if you were able to change anything from your part list, what would it have been? And what was your experience with the 3x gigabyte model? And did that psu meet your expectatives? thanks

I just had a question about the power supply. I'm currently using this one and am hoping to someday SLI, but PCPartpicker is saying I need an additional PCI-E 6-pin in order to do so. You've clearly got a similar setup to what mine will be so I was just wondering if that was an issue for you at all. Thanks!

I'm also using the Noctua air cooler, thinking about sticking with stock fans in the case though, instead of buying all Noctua fans. I wont have a window on my case so I could care less about color coordinating, just want performance. I like your build, looks very clean. Nice job.

The fans for this case are 2 front (1included) 3 top 1 rear (1included) 2 bottom and 2 for hdd So out of 10 fans 2 are included so 8 required Do u really need six case fans for this case Where have u placed them...top rear front? How do u keep some fans for intake and others for exhaust I want to use noctua fans pls help me

Excuse the necro'ing but I'm a noob at building PCs and I was wondering if you could answer a couple of questions for me. I see you got 2 120mm fans and 4 140mm fans, where do they go in the case? And which direction are they pointing at? I'm guessing the top fans are the exhaust and the others are the intake?

The 120ms are at the bottom and the 140ms are set with 1 in the back, 3 in the top, the front fan is a 200m which is stock. The the ones on the air collar are stock. As for which are intake and exhaust, the front and 120ms are intakes and the rest are exhaust

This looks really good. My only gripe is the fact you spent this much money, but would risk it with a bronze rated power supply. My cousin did the same thing a little while back and it caught fire during a power surge. He then upgraded to platinum and never worried about it again. If you don't want to dump and extra $150-$200 for that then for just $25 more you could of had a Gold rated.

How are you able to get your CPU fans to spin that slow? Are you using the low noise adapter and letting the Mobo control off CPU header? If I try to make mine slower than 350rpm they stop spinning or I get a N/A reading.